Essay About Record Producer And Different Producers

Define And Consider Ththe Role Of Recording Studio Technology And The
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Studio technology has developed drastically over the years and has become ever more vital to the record
producer within the music industry. Different producers make use of studio technology in different
ways, often depending on the style of music that they are producing, their preferred method of
production and the bands preference of sound.
The development of recording technology has run parallel to a reorientation in popular music
production. The goal of getting a good sound is no different now than it was when the first recordings
were made, but the idea of what a good sound is and how it should be achieved are radically different.
The role of the recording producer in popular music is very important; the producer plays a very big
part in the realisation of a composition by deciding what technology should be used and how to use it.
Interplay between the musician, record producer and engineer is critical to the recording process.
However, what is eventually fixed to tape must first be composed around the limitations of the available
technology. Thus the most direct interactions between music and technology occur during composition
and realisation.
There are a number of record producers who have become famous for their distinctive sound and their
particular techniques and application of varied developments of studio technology. Some producers
take much advantage of the technology available to them, whilst others seem to prefer to employ more
classical techniques of record production, tending to shy away from the increasing practise of digital
studio technology.
Ross Robinson, well known for producing nu-metal bands such as Korn, Deftones, Limp Bizkit
and Soulfly, generates his own distinctive sound. Robinson focuses more on capturing the soul and
spirit of the music that he produces. He does this by resisting the use of digital technology and
continuing to use analogue, stating that the digital realm is very trendy, and its not a very permanent
sound, its just too synthetic, it doesnt come from flesh and blood. (R. Robinson. Quoted by A.
Pertout. Ross Robinson: The Art of a Record Producer [online]. Available from:
Another producer known for his creation of a specific sound is Butch Vig, who became famous for his
work on the album Nevermind by Nirvana. (1991, Geffen).
Butch Vig had a tendency to record everything dry, steering away from the use of effects when
recording. He would use quite a lot of compression on Kurt Cobains vocals so that he could control
his dynamics, and would also do some double-tracking.
Vig would record the guitars in a very different way, with a great emphasis on the use of distortion. On
the track Breed, Cobain used a Rat distortion pedal which was direct injected . The signal was split
and run into an amp and the direct injection was run to the board to create a fuzzy white-noise kind of
sound (Butch Vig, from R. Buskin: Butch Vig. Talking Garbage. [online] available from:
Working with the band Garbage promoted a different take on producing for Butch Vig. Instead of
simply producing the band, he was also a member of it. Samplers played a huge part in Vigs work in
Garbage, unlike with Nirvana, where recording was based primarily on live instruments. I got bored
spending so many years recording really fast, straightforward punk records, so thats why we didnt
want to approach the Garbage record from the angle of a band playing live. Instead it was like “We can
record 47 guitars on this song, mix it down to a stereo sample, then run it backwards, record another 20
guitars and process them so that they sound like a percussion instrument.”.(Butch Vig, from R. Buskin:
Butch Vig. Talking Garbage. [online] available from:
Like many other producers, Vig used studio technology as an add-on to the instruments, and this
affected the ways in which the songs were written and laid down. The way that we work is that
someone will bring in a loop or a sample, and we might jam for a couple of hours, find one bar thats
kind of cool, load it into our samplers, jam on top of that.and then well take that home, come back,
jam on it some more, record some more things, add and subtract.(Butch Vig, from R. Buskin: Butch
Vig. Talking Garbage. [online] available from:
Richard D. James, performer and producer, more popularly known as Aphex Twin, uses his computer as
his primary instrument, an increasingly popular